The Last Tramp
15/04/2017 07:28
The Last Tramp
A man walks into a hotel and goes to the reception where he stands and says to the receptionist, `I haven`t any money, but I`d like a cup of coffee.` The receptionist dispenses to him a cappuccino from behind the reception desk with the brass bell on it to ring if there`s no one there to deal with the visitors hoping to be admitted as guests of the establishment. The man asks, `Where can I sit to drink the coffee?` The receptionist comes around from behind the desk through the aperture devised to admit and afford egress to the encumbent within the reception area and leads the man over to a table amongst some other tables by a window and seats him upon a chaise longue. `Do you need anyone to work here? I haven`t any skills, but I`m strong and physically unimpaired.` The receptionist tells him, `Yes, we need someone to sweep the stairs. We have a lot of stairs and it`s a needed employment, which the hotel can afford to give to you.` `I accept your generous offer,` says the man, `please show me the tools I will require and tell me when to begin.` He drinks the cappuccino in a single gulp and stands. The receptionist says, `Come with me, please.` He follows and is led to a lift where the receptionist says to the lift attendant, `Please take this man to the second floor of the hotel and put him into room 213. Here`s the key.` `What,` the receptionist pauses to ask, `is your name?` The man tells her, `Geoffrey Monmouth.` `This man, who attends to the needs of the guests with the lift, is Gregory Liversidge, and I am Everest Snow.` The three watch the progress of the lift`s descent by means of the indicator lights as it travels down from 7 to G-for-ground floor.
The lift attendant, resplendent in his hotel uniform of red serge, with golden stripes along the outside of the trouser legs, and golden buttons to fasten the double breasted jacket, takes care to adjust the red and gold striped pillbox hat on his crown and stands aside gesturing for Monmouth to enter the empty space within the lift as the doors open. The attendant passes through and into the lift before turning to press the button for floor 2. Before the doors close behind the lift attendant, and the newly ensconced sweeper of the stairways, the receptionist has something else to say, `You`ll find most of what you`ll need for your stay in the bathroom. The hotel will give an advance so you can buy what else you need. There`s a suit and shirt in the wardrobe in the bedroom, which may suit you. If not, we`ll establish what you need in the way of suitable attire and obtain it somehow. I`ll be along later with the advance.` The receptionist turns a heel and retreats without further remark from either of the occupants of the lift with its now silently closing doors. The attendant and his charge ascend to floor 2 and they leave the lift to cross the hallway to the room 213 where the attendant gives the key to the sweeper of the stairways, who says, `The key.` He takes the key and ceremoniously unlocks the door to the room. Uncertain whether the lift attendant has anything else to contribute to the scene, Monmouth walks through the hallway to the round brown glossy table he can see at the further end inside a room that he supposes is a lounge area. Placing the key on the table, he turns and asks, `Coffee?` Liversidge smiles, `There`s usually coffee in the bedrooms, along with a water heating jug and some bags of tea, dried milk, sugar, and non-calorific sweeteners; for if you don`t want sugar. I`ll leave you here now.` The lift attendant, resplendent in his red and gold, leaves through the hallway and out the door; closing it simply.
Monmouth goes through the lounge past what he supposes is the bathroom, because of the white gleaming marble he can see is there, and on into what he presumes is a bedroom as he can see the pink silken curtains parted to give a view of some trees with a similar pink and bedroomy colored carpet beneath the window. That causes him to gravitate towards the window`s trees, where he stands self-admiringly staring at his reflection, while barely acknowledging the correctness of his perspicacity as the bed looms into his peripheral vision upon his entering that portion of the suite of rooms made available to him by the receptionist of the hotel. Drawing his self-admiring gaze from his reflection, Monmouth goes over to the jug by the bed and, picking it up, returns to the bathroom where he fills the water heater before returning it to its stand and switching it on. He sits on the bed for a while, selecting from the various brands of coffee available and, having chosen a sachet of El Cordoba, tears it open and pours it into the cup provided. Monmouth adds dried milk from another sachet, and sugar from two further sachets. Observing the jug click itself off - as an indication that the water is ready for the coffee - Monmouth takes hold of the jug, and pours it thoughtfully amongst the crystals. Sipping it carefully, because of the heat that might burn, Monmouth watches the day turn to dusk.
Placing the cup onto the saucer provided, Monmouth blinks circumspectly towards the wardrobe and goes over to inspect the contents. Throwing wide the wardrobe doors with their close brass handles, Monmouth observes not one but four suits of presumably varying size inside. Taking the suit that looks good to him, he puts it on, and opening the drawers located below a mirror, and beside where the suits hang, he discovers several shirts of differing sizes and colors inside their shop bought plastic wrappings. Going through to the lounge area with its brown glossy round table and sofa, Monmouth espies the kitchen area with its hotplate and sink. Opening a drawer beneath the sink unit, he takes a knife. Going back to the bedroom, he uses the knife to open one of the shirt packages, blue, and spends some time removing the pins, plastic and cardboard, before satisfied that he`s located all of the devices and contraptions designed to prevent his wearing the shirt, he puts it on, `Ouch!` A pin remains in the collar and it`s stuck into his neck. Monmouth can`t see the pin and so he looks into the wardrobe mirror to locate and remove it, `Ouch!` He removes the pin and stabs it into a section of the cardboard that had supported the collar in its cellophane wrapper. Crumpling the debris into a nondescript shape of manageable proportions, Monmouth deposits the rubbished pin and the other shirty paraphernalia into a waste bin thoughtfully provided by the establishment under a desk beside its chair next to the bed.
Making another coffee, Monmouth watches the dusk turn to darkness and the moon and stars come out. Finally, around 6. 30 pm, there`s a knock at the door of the room. He goes to open the door. The receptionist is there and hands him an envelope with his name on it, and also with the hotel crest and its name, Chaise Longue, `There`s 500 Euros inside. The salary is 2000 a month and you live here.` `Thank you,` Monmouth replies, `as you can see,` he steps back,` the suit and shirt fit well enough for me.` `Yes,` the receptionist agrees, `I`ll show you where the broom cupboard is. Please come with me.` Walking together along the hallway of floor 2, the pair reach a doorway at corridor`s end and Snow pulls sharply on the knob to reveal a dark interior, which then illuminates automatically. There are an assortment of brooms and other equipment needful for the occupation of stairway and stairwell upkeep. Snow reveals, `When you have time tomorrow, take a look at what`s here. If there`s anything else you feel is needed, stop by at reception and tell whoever is there that you need something more to accomplish your tasks. Usually, the stairway sweeper begins up on the roof, which does actually require a broom to deal with the dust, etc., that accumulates up there. The muck has to be bagged, rather than swept off the roof; so as not to annoy the guests and the municipality. After that, it`s up to you how fast you progress to the ground floor. There`s a basement area too, and an underground car parking area. All of this is your responsibility now. Go at your own pace. When you`ve finished, it`s time to go back to the roof and begin anew. I hope the arrangement is satisfactory to you. There`ll be a contract after a week or two; for a year or so. We`ll have it drawn up for you, and you can sign it if you remain agreeable. I`ll be at reception until 12. 00 am if you need anything further.`
The receptionist and the stair sweeper return along the hotel corridor. Snow departs at the lift and Monmouth continues to room 213 where the door has remained open. He steps through the entrance and the door closes. The door`s glossy brownness is identical to that of the table in the lounge and the camera on its trolley with the crew that have been following Monmouth about during his sojourn within the hotel environs can now be seen dismantling their equipment outside the door of room 213 and retiring to their rooms in the Chaise Longue where all are staying while the film is being made there. Inside his room, Monmouth is seen to be drinking coffee seated on the bed and looking out of the window at the clouds passing silently across the moon while the stars twinkle piercingly through the bedsheets of heaven. Shortly, the sound of bathroom water is heard running and Monmouth is seen brushing his teeth in the mirror there. Outside the bathroom door can be heard the sound of an electric shaver, although it`s difficult to discern where Monmouth could have produced such an item. In the reception area Snow is seen speaking to no one, `Perhaps he had a shaver in his pocket when he arrived.` Music is heard playing, `Hotel California` (1977) by the Eagles: `They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can`t kill the beast.` Finding a pair of pajamas in a bedside cupboard drawer with a lamp upon it to read the thoughtfully provided novel, The Number Of The Beast (1980) by Robert Anson Heinlein, Monmouth is seen to retire for the night.
Before he switches off the lamp, however, he does take time to read the opening to Robert A. Heinlein`s book, `PART ONE: The Mandarin`s Butterfly`, `... it is better to marry than to burn.` Monmouth dreams, but first he switches on the device he keeps by him to gain esoteric knowledge about people, and things that interest him, while he is sleeping. The ear `phones are tiny and unobtrusive, and the data oozes into his unconscious mind as he enters that deep sleep state where theta waves arise to become the mind`s highest level receptors, "It`s a quotation from Saul of Tarsus (Cor: 7. 9), the Christian apostle who took the name Paul (c. 5-67 CE). He`d been a persecutor of Christians before his conversion to Christianity, which occurred after he was blind for three days subsequent to a vision on the road to the city of Damascus, Syria, of a resurrected Jesus Christ, the founder of the Christian religion, and based upon his simple preaching of non-violence: `Love your neighbor as you love yourself.` (Mk: 12. 31) Paul had been present at the stoning of the deacon of the church in Palestine`s Jerusalem, Steven: `And Saul approved of their killing of him.` (Acts: 8. 1) Steven was `stoned` because of opposition from the Jewish religious police, the Pharisees, who`d had Jesus crucified by the then occupying Roman Empire for `blasphemy`. Accused of calling God, `father`, Jesus was born from his mother, a virgin, Mary. Jesus` subsequent Resurrection was the basis of Christianity`s growth through those who wanted to live after death and Saul`s own conversion followed upon his vision of the resurrected Christ and restoration of his sight in Damascus by a disciple of Jesus, Ananias. The Roman church, with the Pope at its head, that is, the apostle Peter, was established in Rome after the collapse of Italy`s pagan Empire, because of the wider aceptance of Jesus` teaching. Labeling Mary, `the mother of God`, the church of Rome suggested women had their own `seed`, which was the reason for the Pharisees` labeling Christianity `blasphemous`. Consequently, Paul`s belief in wedlock derived from his perception that women bore God.
`The Mandarin and the Butterfly` (1901) is a fairy tale written by Frank L. Baum about a Chinaman who hates children. He`s sent from China by the Emperor to the United States of America (USA) where he persuades a butterfly with the promise of a longer life to transmit his magic spell transforming children into pigs. The butterfly likes girls, and so tries the magic on a pig, which becomes a boy who torments girls. The butterfly turns the boy back into a pig, and then turns the Chinaman into a pig. When Jesus met a man possessed by demons on the road near the town of Gadarene, the demons, named `Legion`, asked to be allowed to go into a herd of pigs, after Jesus` expelling of them from the man`s body, and the pigs promptly ran off a cliff into the sea and drowned, because they were a metaphor for the occupying Roman legions of the Emperor, which obeyed orders and had no will of their own. Because Jesus` mother was the Virgin Mary, that is, his birth was uncontaminated by men`s semen, Baum`s fairy tale is a criticism of men`s desire to invade and possess, that is, girls aren`t boy sons (poisons), which correspond to `Legion` seeking to drive humanity to its death. The Number of The Beast is about a `magic car`, which takes its occupants wherever they want to go, for example, Frank L. Baum`s `Oz`, a fantasy land made famous by actress Judy Garland`s performance in the MGM film, The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz (1939): `... on the advice of Professor Wogglebug, we made small changes in Gay Deceiver -` Glinda the Good, witch of Oz, reveals to Heinlein`s crew that she has adjusted their flying car: `... no harm has been done to the structural integrity or to the functioning of your beloved craft. When you notice - you will notice - if you do not like the changes, all you need do is say aloud, `Glinda, change Miss Gay Deceiver back the way she was.`` (XXXII, `Where Cat is, is civilization.`) Glinda has changed the car`s mind, that is, she represents `woman`s seed`, which doesn`t want to be invaded and possessed, whereas that`s men`s evil nature.
Gay`s crew consists of two married couples. Jake, the inventor of the space-time `continua craft`, which translates as a flying car that can time-travel and access all universes `real and imaginary`, and his wife, Hilda, and Deety, Jake`s daughter, together with her husband, Zeb. In the course of the narrative, Jake and Zeb are described as MCPs, that is, `male chauvinist pigs`, because they aren`t girls, although the possibility of women sexually reproducing by means of their own `seed` - as mothers of God - remained a publishing taboo: `... when it involves changing male minds, it is better to let men reach their own decisions; they become somewhat less pig-headed.` (XIV, `Quit worrying and enjoy the ride.`) Part One of Robert Heinlein`s novel is succeeded by `Part Two: `The Butterfly`s Mandarin`, which suggests that, in the second half of his book, Heinlein`s Co-Pilot of the `magic car`, Zeb, evinces `pig-headed behavior` (XXX, `Difference physical laws, a different topology.`) towards Captain Jake, because Deety and Hilda correspond to female `butterflies` after the Japanese fashion. In the short story, `Madame Butterfly` (1898), by John Luther Long, the central male character, Pinkerton, takes a geisha as a temporary wife, and leaves only to return to the city of Nagasaki as an MCP married to a young blonde woman seeking to legitimize the bastard by adopting `butterfly` Cho-Cho-San`s baby. In short, women don`t produce pigs, men become so through MCP interaction with other males, which is what Heinlein`s description of the men as `pigs` by their wives, and each other in the `magic car`, Gay, comments upon during its routine bouts of realistic repartie.
Often euphemisms for bureaucrats, Heinlein is attributing the absence from Western literature of women`s futanarian mode of sexual reproduction between themselves to the censoring of those who`re capable of perceiving the truth by international agreement amongst `Mandarins`, who give the responsibility of blinding those among the population to intelligence agencies employing assassins, who thereby permanently `dumb down` the masses: `Deety would kiss a pig if the pig would hold still for it (if he didn`t, I would turn him into sausage; kissing Deety is not to be scorned).` (XXXIII, `- solipsism is a buzz word.`) Zeb`s observation is tantamount to a declaring of the hidden truth, which is that bureaucratic Mandarins prefer pigs, and girls are conditioned to embrace them. `Part Three: Death And Resurrection` is devoted to an encounter with Lazarus Long, the long-lived-by-rejuvenation hero of several Heinlein novels, for example, Time Enough For Love (1973), in which Long travels back in time to the period of the First World War (1914-18) to have sex with his mother, Maureen, in an escapade stopping just short of Long fathering himself. In The Number Of The Beast Heinlein`s `magic car` participates - on June 20, 1982 (XLV, `A Stitch In Time`) - in a time-travel rescue of Long`s mother, 99 + years Maureen, from ephemerality. It`s a critique of modern religion`s handicapping of medical science to promulgate a univeral mysticism denying the role of bio-technology in the conferring of bodily immortality, along with the perception that Mandarins` preference for pigs doesn`t resurrect `woman`s seed`, which is what Jesus` mother, the Virgin Mary, represents, and what Maureen Long could have meant for Heinlein`s readers if he`d been able to break the publishing taboos against depictions of human futanarian sex between women.
The last, and briefest part of Heinlein`s novel, is `L`Envoi`, which is the French word for `shipping`, and takes cognizance of the value of the socializing role of the science ficton convention at which fans arrive dressed as favorite characters. Heinlein`s characters `ship in` as themselves, and the ubiquitous hermaphroditic `black beast` that lurks in the shadows to plague the adventurers throughout the novel`s progress is finally identifiable: `Mellrooney! The worst troublemaker in all the worlds.` (XLVIII, `L` Envoi`) It`s an anagram of a Heinlein pseudonym, Lyle Monroe, where Bam Lyle was his mother`s name, and `mell` is the Hungarian word for the breasts of women like those of the famous Holywood movie star and sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe, so hinting that, from the perspective of the Mandarins` pigs, the character of the `beast` is unconventional enough to pose a threat to conditioning, because it represents the unfilfilled potential of futanarian women`s semen. Although `futanari` is a generic word used in Japan for Hentai manga cartoons, and other forms of animation featuring penised women, `fut` meaning `run`, and `tanar` meaning `teacher`, translates in Hungarian as `running an education program`.
Heinlein was aware of English fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien`s knowledge of Finno-Hungarian, in his construction of the Elven language, Sindarin, for his celebrated work, The Lord Of The Rings (1954), featuring the `Dark Lord`, Sauron, a slaver of elves, humans, and other races. In Tolkien elvish `Mellon` means `friend`, so Mellon [of] yore, which is an anagram of Mellrooney, is an old friend, and there are many such at the Heinlein convention. However, although several family names, and Christian names, are indicative of writers on Heinlein`s `guest list`, for example, Harlan [Ellison], who wrote the short story, `I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream` (1967), in which `AM`, a supercomputer, tortures humanity to death, and [Jerry] Pournelle who, with Larry Niven, wrote the novel, The Mote In God`s Eye (1974), about `first contact` with alien `Moties`, who keep museums to restore civilization after it collapses, `Isaac` isn`t Asimov, author of I, Robot (1950), which was made into a 2004 film about slavery starring black actor, Will Smith. He`s Sir Isaac Newton, a Venusian `dragon`, and a character in one of Heinlein`s 1950s novels for juveniles, Between Planets (1951), who is a physicist symbolically masterminding Venus` war of independence from Earth. Consequently, although Tolkien isn`t mentioned as being amongst the guests, that`s not unusual, because no one is mentioned other than ambiguously, that is, by last or first name only. However, the spiritual affinity of Heinlein for his contemporary, Tolkien, appears in the `Mellrooney` anagram as Mellon [of] yore, that is, Jonathan Ronald Reuel`s an old friend, like Isaac, representing freedom from slavery through Christian love and friendship. Heinlein`s contemporaries aren`t actually invited, because bound by alien publishing conventions advocating misogyny against the human race of futanarian women. Equating monogamy falsely with monotheism, men saw themselves as God, because they were monogamous host womb slavers in parasitoid parasitism for war against humanity, and so they couldn`t ever be considered Christians by Heinlein who, in `L` Envoi`, surreptitiously excises them from being invitees to prevent the terrorist warmongers from shipping in as conventionists.
Before the hall of Moria, where the dwarves mined precious ores and jewels, Tolkien`s fellowship in `Part One: The Fellowship Of The Ring`, as they journey on to Mt Doom to unmake the ring of Sauron`s slavery (by dropping it into the mouth of the volcano), remain puzzled for a time by the elvish inscription, `Pedo Mellon a Minno`, which translates as, `Speak, friend, and enter.` (Bk II, Ch. 4, `A Journey In The Dark`). The wizard Gandalf guesses it`s a riddle and mirthfully says, `Mellon` (friend), which magically unblocks their path onwards. As `mell`, in Hungarian, means a woman`s `breasts`, and her race seeks freedom from slavery, that is, she`s beastly to men, because she wants to see their slave ring unmade, Heinlein`s hermaphroditic `beast`, Mellrooney, as an anagram of his author`s pseudonym, Lyle Monroe, is using Hungarian to contribute his understanding of the reason for men`s slave rings. The conflation of `mell` with his mother`s family name, Lyle, and that of sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, represents the struggle of a writer bound by publishing conventions that represent the enslaver`s ring, which broken would leave science fiction writers free to plot the Resurrection of the futanarian human race of `woman`s seed` unfettered by sexual repression and taboo. `L` Envoi` is about convention, that is, MCPs don`t want women to sexually reproduce their own brains` powers to liberate their futanarian race from being warshipped for the entertainment of its Mandarins in conventional warfare engagements for the ring slaving of `woman`s seed`: `The men carried whips; vermin were muzzled. This one vermin - well, `wog` - this wog had managed to pull its muzzle aside and was stuffing this weedy plant into its mouth ... when a whip cracked across its naked back. It cried.` (XXIX, `- we place no faith in princes.`) In parasitology, the parasite that emerges to enslave the host and consume it as its food is termed `parasitoid`, which is the fate of the human species of hermaphoditic futanarian `woman`s seed`; if host womb slavery is what men perpetrate against humanity."
Awakened and refreshed the next day, Monmouth proceeded in as leisurely way as the hotel management allowed. It took him a while to move from the roof to the car park area where he swept up into his pan whatever dust laden grams of the busy consumerist civilization was to be found to have accumulated there, and bagged it to be left for the refuse collectors at the side of the hotel in the large bins placed there by the municipality for that very purpose. By that time almost a year had transpired. During his lunch breaks he`d be found lounging in a second suit from the wardrobe he wore for the occasion in the hotel reception area where he sipped cappuccino thoughtfully handed over to him by the receptionist. He was there now, sipping thoughtlessly, when the receptionist hailed him with a concomitant wave of the arm, `Geoff! Come and stand behind the reception desk for a while, would you? I have something important to do elsewhere in the hotel.` Monmouth went over as bid, and took up his new station behind the reception desk. A man entered the hotel in dusty clothing. He came over to reception and said, `I haven`t any money, but I`d like a cup of coffee.` The sweeper upper hands him a cappuccino from the perculator on the hot plate kept behind the desk, and the new man says, `Where can I sit to drink the coffee?` From his position seated on the chaise longue where the sweep has ensconced him, the newcomer enquires, `Do you need anyone to work here? I haven`t any skills, but I`m strong and physically unimpaired.` The sweep hands him the key to room 213, `Wait for me there.`
There weren`t any women in the hotel, and oinkoiling could be heard as Monmouth got closer to the car pool underneath the Chaise Longue. He poured himself a Hungarian hosszú kávé, or `long coffee`, before swallowing with relish a leisurely mouthful from a large ceramic beaker emblazoned with the hotel crest, a becrowned chaise longue, and read from the small white gold-emobossed New Testament with the edges of its pages gold leafed that he always now carried snugly in the breast pocket of his suit, `Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.` (Mk: 5. 12) Listening to the oinking of the horns from the car pool, beneath the chaise longue where he was nostalgically reclining, Monmouth observed, `The demon, Legion, seems to have survived its drowning in the bodies of the pigs, and is now looking to wend the serpentine way of the driven segments of its community.`
The hotel staff at reception were provided with cream inside small receptacles made of golden tinfoil, so it was possible to make Hungarian hosszú kávé that didn`t make the mouth burn as black cappuccino without cream did. The plastic top could be removed from the tub containing the cream by means of a tab held between thumb and forefinger, which the coffee drinker could carefully pull to avoid spilling the cooling contents, which is what Monmouth had done. `Standing still,` he mused and, seating himself upon the stool provided, made some toast, `Here`s to St Steven. Patron Saint of the Hungarians. Saul watched him while he was stoned, of course, which is why Saul was blind. Later Saul was decapitated. Those who rise from the dead, and continue to live, are often labeled `vampire`, and their heads cut off as a means of disposing of them. I prefer coffee to being stoned, and losing my head. At least it keeps my eyes open for as long as sleep comes.` Monmouth munched into the toast after spreading margarine upon it from a silver package labeled, `marge`, with a rounded stainless steel butter knife also carelessly provisioned by the hotel administration. The camera crew busy themselves dismantling their equipment, and make for the lift where the attendant assists them to get to their rooms from whence they`ll shortly depart for good. Monmouth now has his own thermos. The crew prefer tomato juice and a vodka.